Titans Bearing Gifts
by ninepen
Summary: Come on up. Thanos has a gift for you. It's a gift you can't refuse. AKA: A treatise on gift-giving, in five short parts.
1. The Nature of Gifts

_Please note, there's some unpleasantness in this. However, it's not written in an overly graphic way, and I think it's still safely "T-rated."_

 _The please-don't-sue-me part: I have no claims to anything in the Marvel universe. I make no profit off of this. I am grateful to all those who gave us_ Thor _and_ Avengers _(and all the rest of the MCU movies, which provide such an amazing canvas on which we can paint our own imaginations._

* * *

 ** _Titans Bearing Gifts_**

 **Chapter 1: The Nature of Gifts**

Screaming.

It dug its way through his ears, his nostrils, his eyes, his mouth. It wound around inside his head, into his brain, until there was nothing else.

He had fought in battles, had wounded and killed, had been wounded. He didn't think he'd ever heard screaming like this.

He couldn't tell if the shrieking, piercing voice came from male or female. Agony did not know gender. Neither did madness.

He lost track of time. A few minutes, a few hours. There was nothing to reliably mark the passage of time. No sun moving across the sky. No devices to display it. No meals, not anymore. No one coming to him with questions he would no longer answer, or outstretched hands to force the secrets from his mind against his will. No break in the screams, except when they changed to some shuddering death-rattle sound that was even worse, an attempt to draw more air into the lungs, only to begin screaming all over again.

He sat there stubbornly, on the hard uncomfortable ground. It was for _him_ , all of this. He was certain of it. _"This will be you if you do not tell us what we wish to know. This will be you if you do not cooperate."_ Such words had never actually been spoken to him. But he heard them in every scream.

And then it stopped.

He staggered to his feet, head pounding, screams still echoing in his head, reverberating around where there should be no room for them. He clenched his fists at his side to keep them away from his head. He would not give these creatures any indication of his distress. Not of his free will, at least.

He knew where the sound had come from, though it felt like it had come from everywhere, including inside his own head. He'd come across the room weeks ago; he'd known instantly he wasn't supposed to see it. An actual room, a large one with a door made of metal, a rough metal roof, and four high walls molded from the dark porous stone that made up this asteroid-like realm, if it could even be called a "realm." Shelves carved into a jutting rock held a myriad of instruments laid out in plain sight. Some of them looked little different from items he'd seen Eir or other healers use on Asgard. Most of them he could not imagine Eir ever touching. In the very center of the room was a single rectangular metal table. He'd left quickly and never mentioned having seen it. Looking back, he wondered now if he had in fact been meant to find it. _"This will be you if you do not tell us what we wish to know. This will be you if you do not cooperate."_ But they hadn't threatened him. They'd just taken what they wanted when he stopped giving it to them freely.

The door was in front of him; he couldn't quite remember reaching it. He grasped the handle, then caught himself. _Whatever this is, it's no business of yours. It's nothing to do with you. Walk away. Turn around, and walk away._ He squeezed his eyes shut. The screams still echoed. " _Knowledge isn't a bad thing, Loki."_ His mother had told him that. Once. More than once? Maybe he was imagining the whole thing. He concentrated. They would not take her from him. He had so little left, perhaps not even her, not after Thor returned and ruined everything, twisted and stole his moment of triumph. But if he lost her, it would not be because of that lackey or his unseen master. He would lose nothing to _him_.

" _Knowledge isn't a bad thing, Loki."_ He concentrated. He could see her saying it. Her hair was golden, lit up by the sun behind her. Her face was kind and gentle. Her smile said "I love you."

He took a deep breath and turned the handle, pushing lightly on the door. He already knew its hinges were as silent as death. The light inside was low, but for his eyesight it was sufficient. He could see about a quarter of the room through the cracked-open door. He'd known what he would see, more or less, but he still sucked in a soundless breath. Bare feet and bare legs atop the table. Feet and legs that were not as feet and legs should be, enough so that he still could not tell from the shape of the pale calves and thighs whether this was a male or a female. A foot that dangled over the edge of the table, at an angle that told him bones had been broken, tendons and ligaments torn. A knee that was bent slightly in the wrong direction. Toes that pointed upward. Bone protruding from a bloody shin.

Loki swallowed and forced himself to not look away. _This knowledge I could have been quite happy without, Mother._

"What are you waiting for?" a voice from the far side of the room, beyond his field of vision, rumbled.

His eyes widened in a moment of unrestrained terror, frozen in place by a desire to confront in typical Aesir arrogance, and a conflicting desire to flee and hide among the rocks in utter cowardice…the nature he was born with, he supposed.

"Will you lie there all day? I have given you a gift. I expect you to exercise it. I expect you to be grateful for it."

Loki calmed himself and relaxed his tightened grip on the door handle. The words were not meant for him. The shattered body on the table still lived, or at least the speaker thought that it did.

More time passed, an eternity in probably no more than a minute or two.

"Is this too simple for you? Would you rather I make it more interesting?"

Another sound came from the room then, a croaking sound, the sound of someone trying to speak whose voice had been ruined from screaming.

And then the body on the table began to move.

First the toes. He was close enough to hear the bones grinding and popping. In less than a minute they were back in their normal position. The ankle came next, the one that hung limply as though attached only by the skin. It twitched; its owner moaned. The moan grew louder then turned into a choking sound, and somehow the foot righted itself. Loki stared in horrified fascination. Such severe injuries could not be healed with magic, not that quickly, not that completely. There wasn't even any swelling. Before his eyes the rest of the visible injuries healed, and the continued grinding and popping sounds told him that those injuries were not limited to the legs. A woman's legs, he was almost certain now.

"That's it. You're learning. Now thank your father for this gift."

"Thank you, Father," came the shaky, scratchy voice. Definitely a woman's voice.

"Good girl. Next time you'll do it faster."

His throat tightened and it took every last ounce of self-control he had to close the door slowly. To ignore the sobbing.

* * *

 _Notes_

 _Background:_ Titans Bearing Gifts _is already complete (has been since I think at least March 2015), though I'm not sure how quickly I will post the chapters. I was holding off posting it until I got to the part where I will reference it in_ The Memory Casket _, but since I haven't been able to get a new chapter up of that one in ages, I figure this would be added motivation to make me somehow find the time to do so. So, yes, this is my take on what happened - one small but pivotal part of what happened - after Loki fell from the bifrost._ _I made it a "crossover" story because that was the only way to select Thanos as a character. The Other will appear, too, but he's not available as a character for either of these movies. I also suspect that no one will ever find this story (except those who've "followed" me on here) because it's a crossover, as I think that means it doesn't appear in either the_ Thor _or_ Avengers _feeds. Oh well. :-)_

 _This story is canon for my other stories that are based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we knew it at the end of_ Avengers _, though I think it's written in such a way that it would work as canon up through the current MCU, meaning_ Age of Ultron _. It came to life with my second viewing of_ Guardians of the Galaxy _, entirely inspired by one little line in that movie...which I can't remember right now. Either Gamora or Nebula said something about what Thanos did to them (or was it just the image of one of them "unmangling" her body?). And I imagine that a story by CreativeReading,_ Not the Only Ones _, contributed to my imaginings about who or what else Loki might have come across in Thanos-land. (Her story is a Guardians-Avengers crossover, and if this subject interests you, you should check it out.)_

 _Few-to-no notes on the following chapters, promise! I hope you enjoy the story._


	2. The Spirit of Gift-Giving

_**Titans Bearing Gifts**_

 **Chapter 2: The Spirit of Gift-Giving**

The screaming resumed the next day, or something similar to "the next day." There was no real day here, only starlit night. He'd managed to sleep for an undetermined period of time; therefore it was "the next day."

He did not return to that room. Others may think themselves heroes. Loki was no hero. He'd tried, he'd _wanted_ to be a hero, the greatest hero Asgard had ever known, a hero to be immortalized in verse that proclaimed his glory for all time. Mother now thought him…well. He didn't know what she thought. It wasn't _her_ who'd stood atop the bifrost staring down at him. It wasn't _her_ whose words had rejected him. But her heart was as soft and gentle as her smile, and in retrospect she might not look favorably on the fate he'd meted out to Jotunheim. And Father… _Not Father. Odin._ Odin thought him a pitiful excuse for a son, a creature to be kept on a porous rock shelf, taken down to rule Jotunheim someday, perhaps. A monster returned home to his fellow monsters, the only place he was truly fit to exist.

The Frost Giants, at least, were dead now, he hoped, and neither Odin nor anyone else would be sending him there, whether to rule or be ruled. He laughed, then again more loudly when he could still hear the screams over his own laughter. He was supposed to have joined them, once he realized his efforts had been futile – he was supposed to have joined them in death. Appropriate, it should have been. An irony so delicious that few would ever properly appreciate it. Returned to that from which he'd come.

In quiet moments here and there, he still wished that the fall had resulted in what he'd expected. What he'd opened up his arms and reached out to embrace. In most moments, though, he wanted to kill. He wanted to kill the lackey. He wanted to kill the unseen master. He wanted to kill Odin. He wanted to kill Thor. He wanted to kill everyone on Asgard save, some days, his mother. He wanted to kill any last Frost Giant that somehow still clung to a crumb of the rubble of his realm.

He wanted to kill that blasted woman who would _not stop screaming._

/

* * *

/

If each prolonged round of screaming marked a day – and there wasn't any particular reason to think that it was, actually – then it was on the ninth day when the screams became less pronounced. Less continuous.

On the fourteenth day, he heard not a single scream, and his still-ringing head gave thanks. On the fifteenth day – so determined because he'd risen and slept without hearing anything in between – he crept closer toward the room, close enough to hear that grunts and moans and groans still came from it. But there were no screams.

He walked away. There was nothing he could do for that woman, even if he wanted to.

Something here prevented him from using magic. At first he'd thought it was his weakness after being trapped in the void for who-knew-how-long without food or water or even air, which he'd really thought ought to have killed him. But when his physical muscles began to regain some strength, his other "muscles" did not. He could feel the energy crackling around him when he put all his effort into it, but every attempt to harness it failed. He'd never mentioned it to his savior-turned-captor, but the creature had known all the same, plucking everything Loki knew of magic, every ability, every _in_ ability, along with every other strength and weakness, directly from his mind.

Magic would have done him little good here, anyway. He'd not seen portals or ships or any other form of long-distance travel on this forsaken collection of floating rocks; he had no way to leave. After a few days of quiet, though, he realized there was something to be learned from the presence of the woman on the table. She'd gotten here somehow, and surely not like he had.

A few days later – without the screaming he lost his only means of even loosely marking time; for all he knew he was sleeping every six hours or every thirty – food and water were finally brought to him again. He could live for a long time, perhaps indefinitely, without it, but he knew from experience that his body would eventually weaken and virtually shut down. He forced himself to eat slowly and calmly – he knew also from experience that anything else would quickly rob his body of what he'd consumed – and he couldn't even bring himself to care that he was eating with his fingers and using the bit of oddly spongy bread to sop up every last drop of the brown sauce that had covered the unidentifiable meat.

He fell asleep with a pleasantly full belly.

He woke to pressure on his ribs.

"How pleasant to see you again," Loki said, then jerked away from the boot pushing into his side and in a fluid movement got to his feet. "It's been a while. But then, I suppose you've been too busy to be a proper host. If I've outstayed my welcome, I'll be happy to be on my way if you'll just provide me with the means."

"You talk too much, Asgardian," the hooded bloody-toothed creature said.

"Really? It wasn't that long ago that you were quite insistent that I wasn't talking _enough_. Perhaps you lack certain higher brain functions, along with a name?"

"You have asked about our master. Would you like to know more of him?" the lackey asked, taking a series of slow steps in a semi-circle around Loki, who stood still and watched him carefully, body tense and ready to react.

" _Knowledge isn't a bad thing, Loki."_

"I would know his name, if he actually has one," he answered carefully, each sound deliberately and tightly crafted.

" _Thank your father for this gift."_

"His name is Thanos. And he wishes to see you," the nameless one said, grinning and baring his red-stained teeth.

 _Thanos. Thanos. Thanos._ The first name he'd heard for anyone here at all, other than his own. It should have rung bells – loud, heaving ones that made the ground shake with each peal – but it meant nothing to him. Two random syllables strung together.

The Other began to walk away, oddly slowly though Loki knew him capable of much faster movement; Loki took a deep breath and followed. They took a path through boulders and jagged rock, and twice along the way Loki glimpsed what appeared to be the vastness of space in gaps in the rock. The few landmarks all looked largely alike – a boulder here, a rock jutting out a bit higher than normal there – but Loki had trained for navigation in unfavorable conditions, and he was learning his way around. The smooth-surfaced steps of stone and metal that floated up into a staircase that twisted up behind a ledge had not been there before.

Thanos's grotesque servant – it was so _good_ to have at least one name around here – paused before those mysterious stairs. "Go. He has a gift for you."

/

* * *

 _Notes_

 _This one's going up especially because of the delay in the next chapter of Beneath while I rework a few scenes... :-)_


	3. The Avoidance of Gifts

_**Titans Bearing Gifts**_

 **Chapter 3: The Avoidance of gifts**

Loki struggled to control his reaction but it was impossible to keep it entirely hidden. He saw again those legs and feet, broken and bent and mangled. Only now they were his.

He had a choice to make. Would he run? Would he fight? Would he go to his fate on his own two feet? Would he beg? Would he scream for hours on end, day after day after day, until finally he accepted his fate and expressed his gratitude for his gift? Would he break under this Thanos?

The lackey waited with more patience than Loki had known him to demonstrate in the past, but the decision didn't take that long, in the end.

He had not survived what he had only to come play the weakling for some faceless tyrant. _Whoever and whatever he is,_ I _am the monster,_ Loki told himself. _I will break for no man. For no creature. There is no weakness in me. I'll force him to kill me before I accept his "gifts."_ Any naïve thoughts that these beings might actually be friendly, the saviors he'd first thought them to be, when he'd wept his relief and they'd provided comfort and sustenance and sympathetic ears, those were already long gone. Loki knew nothing good waited for him at the top of those stairs, and there was no sense pretending otherwise.

He took a step. A lesser being would have quaked merely at placing his foot upon these steps loosely anchored to each other but not to anything else, not visibly. Loki looked not down but up, and took another step, and another and another, until he stood before the back of an enormous floating chair.

"Anyone home?" he asked casually.

The chair turned.

"Prince Loki Odinson," said the creature who sat there. He was large, larger than an Aesir, probably not as large as a Frost Giant – present company excluded, he thought with a brief twist of nausea – though he couldn't be certain with the man seated. He wore a golden helmet and armor, his skin was a dark shade of what looked like violet, and his eyes were an unnaturally shining blue.

"If you don't mind, I prefer 'King Loki,'" Loki said with a winsome smile. "And you must be Thanos. What about yourself? Is it really just 'Thanos'? No second name? No title? Not 'King Thanos?' Names must be important here, since you're the only one who seems to have one. Are you expecting that you're so infamous that your one name alone is sufficient for all the realms and the realms beyond the realms to know who you are? I'm sorry to disappoint, but your name is completely unknown. It may as well not exist, like everyone else I've encountered in this place. I've never heard of you at all."

Thanos grinned, and a row of gleaming white teeth appeared. Then he stood, and descended the few additional steps that led to his chair.

Loki stood his ground and watched, never breaking eye contact, never letting his expression change, never swallowing, blinking only when his eyeballs became too dry to avoid it. _Perhaps as tall as a Frost Giant after all._

Thanos towered over him. He would tower over Thor. At that thought, Loki felt his jaw twitch. He did not want to think about _him_ anymore. The lackey had forced enough of those thoughts and memories from him.

"I'm glad you can admit to your ignorance, false Asgardian. But I will change that. I will give you knowledge."

"I'd rather you give me a ship fast enough to take me to some more scenic part of the cosmos."

"How limited your desires are. How childish."

Loki opened his mouth to speak, but all his air rushed out in a loud grunt as he found himself flat on the ground, on his belly, face pressed painfully into the rocky surface beneath him. He moved his arms to brace himself to rise, but an unbearably heavy weight pressed down onto his lower back, pinning him there.

"I dislike it when children don't pay the proper respect and attention."

Loki had no time to think through those words before he was lying on his back, though somehow he still felt the weight on his spine, or a reflection of it – it was there but he was removed from it. He lifted his head, the only thing he _could_ lift, it seemed, and saw to his horror that he was lying on a metal table, his body limp and unresponsive. His head fell back as he lost control of that as well. He closed his eyes and told himself to harden his resolve, to give nothing of himself, to display no weakness. He was done with frantic desperate efforts to prove himself, to please others. He would please _himself_ , by never giving in.

He felt something brush the toes of his bare right foot, then he felt the little one break. The pain flared red-hot, then settled into something bearable. A second toe broke, the one next to the first. It hurt worse, and longer. But still manageable. A third toe broke, then a fourth, then the big one, in a crescendo of pain that left his heart hammering but dragged no sound from him except heavy breaths forced out his nose.

"Perhaps you might be motivated to show respect now," Thanos said, and if Loki had had any doubts before, he now knew for certain that this was the voice who'd asked the mangled woman to thank him. "Or shall I continue?"

Loki gritted his teeth for a couple of seconds, giving himself a chance to make sure he could speak in a normal voice. "Do what you will. I will never thank you for breaking my body."

"I don't ask thanks for breaking fragile bodies. I ask thanks for removing their fragility. For providing the ability to repair them. But not from you, insolent boy. Your body is already less fragile. You are different."

Loki sucked in a shallow gasp of air as he blinked and saw the dark rock beneath him again. He was not on the table. His bones were not broken. But the weight on his back was easily painful enough to make up for it. "I am Loki. Of Asgard. And I. Do. Not. Kneel. Not to you. Not to anyone." The effort of getting the words out left him panting shallowly; he was pressed so hard into the ground it was difficult to breathe.

"I never asked you to. I seek an ally, not another subject. I will give you everything you desire, King Loki. Everything you long for. And from you, I do not even ask thanks. I ask only for a trinket."

 _Everything I desire? Everything I long for? Odin's death? Thor's humiliation? Asgard's throne? Name your trinket, Thanos!_ Loki thought. He didn't believe this madman in the slightest. But what he desired most, as a first step, was a way off this cursed chunk of rock, and he would be only too happy to promise Thanos whatever he wanted if he would give him that. He was good at lying. There was a game to be played first, though, and Loki would play it, rock biting into his flesh, his spine threatening to snap. "Your methods of" – he took a gasping breath that still did not fill his lungs – "negotiation are…unique."

Thanos gave a low rumbling sound that reminded Loki of a death groan but that he somehow suspected was a laugh. Then a worse sound met his ears – a cracking sound that came from his back. The steady crushing pain was now joined by fiery spikes of it, as though daggers were repeatedly being thrust into his back.

"I care nothing for politics. For your kingdoms and empires and civilizations. I find things I like, and I take them. Sometimes I destroy them, and sometimes I keep them, when they have a certain spark. I mold and reshape them to my liking. I give them gifts. I care for them when no one else in the universe does. I become their father."

Loki would have laughed at that had he been physically capable of laughter. The irony was too much. _Am I now to have a third father to kill? I suppose he can get in line._ "Your methods…of parenting…also…unique," he gasped out.

Again that rumbling death-rattle laughter fell down on him. And then the pressure disappeared. Loki instinctively positioned his hands again to push himself up, but the pain in his back when he attempted it was horrific, and his body would not obey his very simple commands.

"You have no such spark in you. You have little need of what I usually provide. And I don't need another child right now. Raising stubborn children demands a great deal of time. You also don't need another father, do you, Loki of Asgard? Yes, there is nothing I don't know of you now. Nothing that matters. I know that you sent one father who rejected you to his death, that another father did the same and your heart burns with hatred against him, as it should. I know that you have embraced Death, and that she spurned your advances, and instead sent you to me. I, too, am besotted with her, but I seek her charms in another way. Offerings, gifts, from time to time…"

" _No such spark…"_ The words echoed in Loki's mind, muddling the rest of what Thanos said, crazed rants about death. _So this creature finds nothing worthy in me. Yet he found something worthy in that woman who could not stop screaming day in and day out._ He laughed, the air for it reaching his lungs now, but each small shake of his body sent fresh lightning bolts of pain up his back and down his legs. _Do you actually_ care _what this mad creature thinks of you?_ He squeezed his eyes shut. _Yes, you do, you fool. You've always cared what others thought. Too much. It must end now. It_ must _._

Thanos was still speaking, but Loki had stopped paying attention until he felt enormous hands gripping him under his arms and lifting. He swayed on his feet in front of Thanos, looking up at him, uncertain how it was that he was actually standing. Perhaps the vertebrae had only been cracked, and not broken. Perhaps Thanos had healed it somehow. Perhaps the cracking sound and associated pain had been no more real than his brief time on the table. Whatever it was, the pain was definitely still there, but on Asgard a broken back would need much attention from a healer before the sufferer could stand again.

"I will give you a spark."

"I'd still rather have a ship," Loki said, looking Thanos straight in his shining blue eyes.

"Where would you go? What would you do? You need a course. A purpose. I will give you one. You need a means of proving wrong everyone who doubted you, everyone who distrusted you, everyone who looked on you with suspicion and disdain. Everyone who thought you unworthy."

Loki clenched his jaw as anger welled up in him. _The whole of Asgard,_ he thought. _I'll see them burn._

"It begins with my gift to you."

"Would I be correct in guessing it's not a ship?" Loki asked. He made himself say it. It would be easier to give in, to play nice, to ask eagerly what wonderful things Thanos would bestow on him to make all his dreams come true out of the kindness of his heart in exchange for some "trinket." The being had nearly shattered his spine. Loki would go to his death before he'd bend his knee.

"What do you know of Earth?"


	4. The Lust for Gifts

_**Titans Bearing Gifts**_

 **Chapter 4: The Lust for Gifts**

Loki's breath fell still in his chest.

"Midgard, as those you grew up among called it."

"I know of it," Loki answered slowly, carefully. Thanos _knew_ he knew of Earth. He'd already told the lackey about his most recent encounter with that wretched realm before coming to his senses and regaining control of his tongue.

"This world has something I want."

"A trinket?"

Thanos nodded and gave Loki a glimpse of those bright teeth again. He reached for a leather pouch that hung from his belt and emptied the contents into his massive hands, then held it out in front of Loki. "Do you recognize this?"

Loki looked at it for a long moment, then, affecting a bored expression, looked back up at Thanos. "Should I?" He had no idea what it was, this oblong blue stone that glowed faintly, but he wasn't about to admit that, not when he didn't know what any of this was about.

"It's related to the item I seek. A weaker, imperfect form of it. It will grow stronger when it's brought nearer to its superior. You will go to Earth, you will obtain my trinket. In exchange, I will give you an army with which to take Earth as your own, to rule as you see fit. To show the one who sits on Asgard's throne which son was truly worthy of it. To remind the true Odinson which of you is more powerful."

 _Midgard,_ Loki thought, mouth literally salivating at the thought. _He wants me to take Midgard._ His _supposed realm. The one he demonstrated the depth of his love for by smashing the bifrost apart, abandoning his beloved realm for the rest of his mortal woman's life. The one that has always been under Asgardian protection and is now unreachable by Asgard…_

/

* * *

/

Thanos watched the transformation of the boy's face. A starved child presented with a steak. And a very sharp knife. He had never bent anyone to his will more quickly.

/

* * *

/

Thanos's gift-giving began almost immediately. Unfortunately, it continued in his rather unorthodox teaching methods. After Loki made his way back down the stairs – with considerably more difficulty than he had gone up them, now that his back was injured – he gave the blue stone to the lackey as instructed, and the lackey in turn pressed a cup into his hand. Loki looked at the cup. He was thirsty, but he'd never eaten or drunk in front of this creature before and didn't intend to start now.

The lackey with the strange metal grating over his face, a mockery of armor, held the stone and stared at Loki. Loki tasted coolness over his throat and looked down to see he'd drained the cup. He looked at the stone with suspicion and growing anger, then threw the cup to the ground and advanced on The Other, who lifted his hand. Loki stopped short. He knew the agony that hand could bring. "What are you playing at, Nameless One?"

"You will learn to do this. You will need to soften amenable wills. When you take this stone to Earth, its power will be magnified. You will _control_ wills, whether they are amenable or not. You will gain allies. You will take the trinket. You will open a pathway for our army. You will secure Earth as your own. You will send the trinket back to him."

"What is this trinket?" Loki asked. He was curious, but he didn't really care. Midgard was by far the bigger prize. Loki would loot every vault in the realm and deliver wagonloads of trinkets to Thanos if he wanted.

"He calls it the Cosmic Cube. You will learn more later. First you will learn to influence ignorant minds. Come."

Loki waited a moment to make a point, but then followed. Several minutes later, he recognized where they were going, and he couldn't stop the feelings of trepidation. _He doesn't want another child,_ he told himself _. This isn't his gift._

The lackey opened the giant metal door, and Loki stepped inside the room. It looked exactly as it had before, down to the woman's body on the table. She was clothed now – tall black boots, simple black skirt that did not quite reach her knees, silver chain belt, fitted sleeveless black tunic. In fact, he realized he had no way of knowing that it _was_ the same woman. But the shape of the legs looked the same, the pale skin tone looked the same. She had long, bright red hair, which he hadn't seen before. Only a single manacle fastened her right wrist to the edge of the table, but she lay still as death. Green eyes fell on him and stayed there, ignoring the lackey and tracking Loki as he approached.

"You will practice on her. She is malleable now."

Loki felt as though his heart skipped a beat. _Was her body broken for me? Was she made "malleable" for this?_ It was an unpleasant thought, but what had been done had been done. No one had cared for him, and he had no cause to care for this woman, another nameless being on this nameless rock. Loki was already talented at influencing ignorant minds using nothing more than his famed silver tongue. If Thanos wished to teach him another way to do it, using no words at all, using whatever magical power was in that blue stone, well… _Knowledge isn't a bad thing, is it?_ Something burned in the pit of his stomach at that distorted echo of his mother's words, and he snatched the stone from the lackey's open palm to stamp it out. Weakness, the desire to please others, guilt…he was done with all of it.

He turned to the lackey. "What must I do?"

/

* * *

/

Loki spent the following days learning. Drawing on the stone's power, he was soon able to influence the woman in small ways, to place suggestions directly into her mind, suggestions that more often than not she would accept. The lackey had called her "malleable"; Loki would call her "broken." That didn't bother him. He hadn't broken her. Over time she grew stronger, though, and more resistant to his suggestions. She was aware of what he was doing, and the more he did it the more she recognized the thought as a foreign one and rejected it even though she wasn't opposed to the thought itself. By that point it didn't matter. He'd learned what he needed to.

The small blue stone had more power than his "hosts" had initially told him, and Loki worked to improve their initial design for a vessel for it, something that would harness and direct that power, something that was very loosely reminiscent of Gungnir. While they worked, he practiced mastering the influencing magic without the stone, magic he'd been granted again once he'd accepted Thanos's "gift." It wasn't easy, but the first time he got the woman to stand up and pick up the brush from the small number of items left in her reach while he stood hidden in a shadowed corner, he grinned in triumph, even as she realized what had happened and turned to fix a murderous glare at him. He strode out the door, then collapsed against its shaped rock wall, exhausted. Sickened. It was possible without the stone, but would be much easier with it. Much less unpleasant.

He couldn't wait to see its effects once it was fully activated by being "brought near its superior," the "Cosmic Cube." He would rule Earth's wandering simpletons. They would bow down before him, grateful that he'd come to simplify their short, frantic, desperate lives. If he had to force them at first, if he had to enslave a few of them in the beginning, that was perfectly acceptable in order to achieve the greater glory.

/

* * *

 _Notes_

 _In terms of writing, this for me was the most painful of these five chapters. This was me really really not wanting to shy away from Avengers-Loki. This is, in my mind, Loki at his darkest. And something I could write a book about here, but, you know me, I go for millions of words of fanfic instead. This chapter also contains one of the most tragic lines I've ever written, in my opinion; I hope it gave your gut a twist like it still does mine._

 _A note on movie canon: while I stated earlier that this story could work as canon beyond the_ Avengers _time frame (which is all it's meant to be compliant with since this is part of my family of stories that were conceived of following_ Avengers _but before_ The Dark World _and_ Ultron _), I'd forgotten about the explanation of the stone is Loki's scepter that I use in_ Beneath _and so again used here. In_ Ultron _we get a different explanation, that this stone is an Infinity Stone, but this story predates_ Ultron _so that idea wasn't incorporated here. (With some stretching you could say it's still true, and Thanos is simply wrong is his explanation, but that wasn't my intent at the time.)_


	5. The Cost of Gifts

_**Titans Bearing Gifts**_

 **Chapter 5: The Cost of Gifts**

"Get up."

Loki opened his eyes to the half-hidden wrinkled gray face of The Other. _Make me,_ he thought, letting his expression communicate his words.

The hand came down with a snarl and Loki smoothly pulled himself into a sitting position, lifting his arms above himself to stretch. The hand drew back and Loki studiously ignored it. His back had stiffened during the night – it still ached from whatever Thanos had done to it, and he'd been provided as his sole piece of bedding a thin pelt from some unknown creature which did little to cushion the rough rock he slept on.

"They're gathering others to study it. You know of this one, the one they most want to work on it. You will go, and ensure cooperation."

"I haven't had my breakfast yet," Loki said, and this time the hand came down. Somehow, even as every nerve in his body screamed in pain, Loki kept his silence and didn't collapse. When it was over he swallowed to moisten his throat…and to take a moment to recover. "You have no sense of humor whatsoever." It was worth it, really, enduring these occasional "reprimands," to remind the lackey that unlike the woman on the table he was not broken, that he was a king, that he acted of his own free will, that he was not to be toyed with or ordered around. He walked right up to the line he'd learned to recognize, he stretched a toe across it, then pulled it back just before it could be crushed. Before it could be crushed too badly, at least.

He rose and followed The Other. His lack of interest was entirely feigned. He knew of fewer people on Midgard than he could count on one hand. Two he'd seen and had barely taken notice of. One, however… _Will I be paying you a visit today?_ He didn't even know her name, but he would never forget her. _That might even be worth skipping breakfast for._

"Go," the lackey hissed.

Loki turned to shoot him an angry look, but before his eyes the world began to disappear, only to be replaced with another world. _So that's how he intended me to "go."_

It was dark. Dank. He heard something dripping in the distance. When his eyes came into focus, he realized that blending into the sparsely-lit corridor was a dark-skinned man in black attire, a black patch over his eye. It wasn't the same eye that Odin kept covered with shining gold metal, but it was enough for Loki to immediately dislike this man who exuded power and arrogance just from his bearing, from the set of his jaw and the confident stillness of his stance. _Who does he think he is, to think so much of himself?_ _Just a mortal. He thinks he has power?_

It was dizzying, the rush that ran through his veins, the euphoria, the desire, the raw need. Loki would take this planet, and teach all of its self-important mortals their place.

Beneath his boot.

Loki lifted his hand before his face, and curled the fingers into a fist. It felt real, but he knew it was not. He was here, invisible, on Midgard – and yet he was not here. They'd projected him to this realm somehow. His mind was here, but not his body, not really. That was sufficient for Loki, whose mind had long been his strongest weapon. That and his tongue. He lowered his hand, and ran it down his clothing, the same thing he'd worn when he ruled Asgard, though now the materials were again crisp and new. And in the pocket in the seam of his pants was a familiar shape – the blue stone. It hadn't been there before, and Loki didn't know if it was really there now. He supposed it was only in his mind, but he hadn't put it there; that meant it was there for a reason.

Footsteps approached. Slow. Somewhat hesitant. A bit uneven, a bit heavy. _Not a young person, probably,_ he thought. _Not the woman._

"Dr. Selvig," the man in black called. The footsteps halted, then continued, coming closer. A figure appeared from around the corner, and a smile slowly spread across Loki's face, the disappointment that this "Dr. Selvig" was not Thor's woman disappearing before it could fully take root. He _did_ recognize this man, one of the three mortals Thor had already won to his side in just a couple of days on Midgard.

"So you're the man behind all this?" Dr. Selvig said as he approached.

He stood quietly and listened. He wasn't sure why he was here yet, but it was clear he was witnessing something important.

The man in black walked behind a silver container, and Loki felt his heart speed up as both of the mortals' attention focused on it. _Can it be? Do they really have it? The mortals?_ He'd told the nameless one that it was better known by another, more elegant name. That it was lost from history. That its power was everything they believed it to be and more.

There was a click, and a hiss, then a glowing, perfect cube of shimmering blue. Loki could barely contain his excitement. It was all true. Everything he'd been told. The mortals had none other than the Tesseract, once the jewel of Odin's Weapons Vault. And Loki was going to take it from them, along with their entire realm. Thor's pet realm.

"Power, doctor," the unnamed man was explaining. "If we can figure out how to tap it, unlimited power."

The older man hesitated, and Loki stepped forward. He knew precisely what he was here for now.

"Well, I suppose that's worth a look," he said, listening with a smirk as the mortal scientist relaxed into his decision and parroted the words back. This Dr. Selvig might have been afraid, but he was also clearly curious, and Loki's simple nudge was sufficient for the curious side to quickly win out.

A few minutes later Midgard faded away again, but this was only the beginning. Loki would be back.

He had his purpose. And it was glorious.

/

* * *

 _Notes_

 _On this chapter: One of the challenges of trying to cover this post-credits scene from Thor is to make that scene feel "real," absolutely the one we've all seen, and yet bring something new to it, not just rehash the scene. I'm not sure I entirely succeeded, but I hope you enjoyed it regardless. I wanted both to bring some explanation to that scene, and to use it to bridge what happens in this story with what happens in Avengers._

 _On this story: The woman on the table was never meant to be Gamora or Nebula from Guardians, though she was absolutely inspired by those characters. If you prefer to think of her as one of them, all you have to do is ignore the physical description bits, or perhaps imagine that Thanos subsequently altered the woman's physical appearance (not at all a far-fetched idea, I think). For the purposes of this story, Loki never knew her name. He never asked. He never cared.  
_

 _On the void between the script pages: I doubt we'll ever know what happened "for real" while Loki was with Thanos. Mostly because no such "for real" exists - where a script hasn't been written or a scene hasn't been shot, no actual answers exist. And then although much as we Loki fans might like it, I doubt Marvel will "waste time" in its action movies to fill in backstory on this. I do suspect that Avengers 3/4 may give us a Loki-Avengers team-up of convenience against Thanos, in which case there's a slight chance we'll get some answers about what "really" went down with Loki and Thanos. But at least for now, it's all up to those of us fans who can't help wondering, theorizing, arguing...or writing._

 _I hope you enjoyed the story. :-)_


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